


The First Noel, the Angels did say

by Owl_by_Night



Series: Twelve days of (multi fandom) Christmas [9]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22055410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owl_by_Night/pseuds/Owl_by_Night
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley do a little shopping and remember the first Christmas
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Twelve days of (multi fandom) Christmas [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1580002
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	The First Noel, the Angels did say

Crowley rather likes Christmas. Not ideologically, obviously, but as the demonic busy season. All that enforced festivity papered over desperation. All that guilt and greed. Squabbling families and demanding children. The pressure to spend and covet and feel miserable about not spending or getting or looking as you want to. Hell had taken some convincing when he’d managed to get Christmas decorations in the shops before summer ended, but it had done wonders for the number of people feeling grumpy and all too easy to tempt. 

After the apocalypse that wasn’t, the arrival of another festive season leaves him with the feeling that he ought to be busy but with no particular demonic purpose in mind (he is, after all, taking a well-earned holiday after all that thwarting of ineffable plans). It leads him to visit the bookshop with overpriced coffee (not that he’d paid) in one of those tacky disposable cups decorated with snowmen (one point for Pollution). 

Aziraphale, to Crowley’s delight, loathes the modern celebration of Christmas. He hasn’t quite moved past the Victorian ideal of family and goose and good will to all men. A celebration that begins with a subdued but tasteful acknowledgment of Advent and ends on Twelfth Night. The commercialisation of the season is an affront. He takes one look at Crowley and winces. 

Ok, so the strand of tinsel draped negligently around his shoulders might be a bit much. 

“Morning, angel,” he says, draping the tinsel over the coat stand, where it suddenly catches light and fizzles into nothing. Aziraphale purses his lips in disapproval. 

“I do wish you’d be more careful,” he says, “standing there like that. You’re going to encourage... customers.”

“Oh, sorry about that,” he says, willing three passers-by to look in at the windows so he can see Aziraphale panic. “You’d better close up for the day, do some Christmas shopping.” 

“I don’t need to do any Christmas shopping,” Aziraphale says, looking worriedly at a sticky fingered child tugging his mother towards the shop window. 

“Humour me then,” Crowley says, reluctantly letting go of his fantasy of Aziraphale sending festive socks to Michael and a vulgar tie to Gabriel. He’s planning to send Beelzebub a Santa hat, just as a reminder to steer well clear of both of them. Maybe one that lights up. 

“I shouldn’t, really...” Aziraphale dithers, on the border of temptation. 

Crowley plays his trump card. “Suppose I’ll have to take this away then.” He removes the plastic lid of the second coffee and lets the smell of gingerbread latte fill the room. Victory is sweet. 

They end up going to a Christmas market. There’s scope, here, for both their interests. Crowley leaves behind him a small trail of children having tantrums and adults suddenly overcome with frustration at the holiday season. Arguments over change and people being jostled in the crowd. Aziraphale leaves a trail of smiling cooks and the scent of cinnamon waffles and mulled wine. He has a bag filled with excellent cheese and other delicacies. Crowley feels a rather un-demonic warmth at the angel’s enthusiasm. Just like old times this: a bit of merry thwarting of wiles, the balance of blessing and temptation maintained and the prospect of a drink at the end of it. 

As they are getting towards what might be called tea time (a trip to the Ritz is planned) they find themselves at a stall selling small wooden nativity sets. Nothing too unusual for the time of year but these ones are handmade and the figures have a certain... character to them. 

“Look angel,” Crowley says, nudging him with his elbow, “he’s really managed to capture Gabriel, don’t you think?” 

The wooden angel has a rather smug expression, tipping into patronising. “I can’t imagine it,” Crowley continues, “did he really talk to that poor girl or did he just take the credit afterwards?”

Aziraphale looks shifty. “He did try...” he says. He picks up one of the figures of Mary and run a careful finger over the carving of her veil. “Poor girl was terrified. Gabriel was never very good at humans. It was a kindness, to explain things afterwards. Someone had to talk to Joseph too.”

“I thought he should have done the decent thing without needing telling,” Crowley sniffs. 

“Well I’m sure he would but... he did love her you know. Understandable if he had some qualms when he thought she might prefer someone else. Love complicates things.”

“Does it, angel?” Crowley grimaces. “I wouldn’t know.” 

Aziraphale looks hurt. Perhaps he thinks it’s an unkind reminder of his previous assumptions about demons and a very awkward conversation two months ago. 

“For some of us,” the stall holder says, “it never seems that complicated at all.” 

He’s smiling encouragingly at them both. He’s old and grey haired and wise in a very human way. A way that Crowley sometimes thinks eternal beings might lack, given their immortality. It would explain why the threat of not just dying but ending, brought certain things into sharp relief. 

And no, it’s never been that complicated for him. Aziraphale is the one who complicates. Crowley just thinks yes, you’re mine, run away with me. You and me against the world, right? What more do we need?

“Now my wife,” the man says, with the wrinkles of his face crinkling into habitual fondness, “she’s one of life’s worriers. Always second guessing. Just you look at that shepherd there, that’s based on her.”

The shepherd does appear to be a woman, face somewhere between awe and worry. Looking more closely, Crowley notices that some of the Kings are Queens, and the angels are varied too. Well, good for him, even if Crowley can’t quite approve of nativity sets as a general rule. Propaganda for Upstairs, he thinks. 

Aziraphale puts down the statue of Mary with regret. It does look rather like her, Crowley thinks, even though he only met her later when she was worn and worried with grief for her son. 

He attempts to convey, with a series of facial grimaces behind Aziraphale’s back, that the stall holder should keep that particular set back until he can buy it. The man gives him a nod. 

He returns in the late afternoon and asks for another angel. 

“Do you remember the man I was with earlier? I was looking for an angel that looks like him.”

The man looks at him with a smile. “That’s a sweet idea,” he says. “I think I can manage that. Been together long, have you?”

“Oh... you know... feels like centuries.”

The man laughs. “Like me and the missus then. First Mary I ever carved looked like her, back when our first was born. Now we’re still there, with the sheep, still part of the story.”

Crowley feels something that might be emotion. Or indigestion. A twisting feeling of envy and recognition. 

“What about you then?” 

“Me?” Crowley asks. 

“Which part would you be, if he’s the angel?”

“Oh I... I wassssn’t there.”

Not part of that story. No temptations to be had there and no snakes welcome at the manger. He hadn’t even gone to Herod as he’d been told. He couldn’t get involved in all of that, with the kids. He’d let Aziraphale get on with it, gone and got himself drunk and then found himself a group of women of ill repute, who took him in for a while. 

The old man is looking at him again, so Crowley just shrugs and walks away.

When the nativity set arrives, delivered to the bookshop one morning without a note, there are two angels: one smug and one kind, with curly hair. There’s also another figure, less traditional perhaps but yet familiar. The inn keeper (or maybe the inn keeper’s wife - it’s hard to tell) bent forward as if watching the Christ child. Compared to the other figures, their expression is unreadable. Are they meant to be wicked for turning the family away? Or kind for offering room in the stable as the only alternative? Looking now to interfere or only drawn to the little child, no matter his birth?

“Oh Crowley,” Aziraphale says, setting the figure next to the smiling angel. “If only you’d known how much I wished you were there...”


End file.
